


I Hoped There'd Be Stars

by templeremus



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Character Study, Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Family Feels, Gen, Hope, Hopeful Ending, I am going a bit stir-crazy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Imprisonment, Introspection, It's four AM here, Love, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Post-Season/Series 12, Season/Series 12, Societal Shame, Storytelling, Team as Family, Time Travel, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23225401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeremus/pseuds/templeremus
Summary: Keep your faith. Despite everything, keep your faith. The Doctor, alone, after series 12.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	I Hoped There'd Be Stars

**Author's Note:**

> So this began life as a prompt challenge, believe it or not, two weeks ago. The prompt word was "elder."  
> And then everything changed. Those of you self-isolating or on lockdown right now, stay safe. Stay calm. Will we continue to travel hopefully, even if only in words for now.

It took her longer than it ought to have done to explore the cell. The memory of the Citadel was still in her bones, like residual heat from a fire. Now that the initial shock had waned she was afraid of setting off another alarm. The dread conjured tripwires everywhere: traps within traps, closing her in, cutting the world (which was the cell) into ever-smaller parts. 

She knew where dread would leave her, if she gave in to it. It was a better paralytic than anything the Master could come up with, needing no technology or contact to sustain itself. The Time Lords had built their society on dread, wrapped up every secret in so much nightmarish myth that most could not stand to look. Some went mad, or ran away, and that was the price paid for keeping the rest in order. The ones who stayed wrote themselves into the planet's protohistory, embellishing and deleting as they saw fit; all this, she had always known and always hated. 

And now that knowledge was unravelling. The myths had been shaken loose, and she was adrift. 

**Once upon several times, in the days when the laws were new and Gallifrey prospered, a child disobeyed an elder.** Over what, it didn't matter. The point was not the rightness or otherwise of the child's cause, but the plain fact of insubordination **.** Nursery maids told this story to infants when they were on the brink of crawling. Teachers told it to novices lagging behind in class. In either case the message was the same. Pay attention; watch your step. One wrong move and there would be very far to fall. 

**The elder made contact with the child and said, _Face me_. Taking flight, the child sought refuge inside the past; but the Toclafane were already there. So the child ran again, into the future, until the elder was a thousand centuries away; but the Toclafane were there too.**

A nightmare kindled from the embers of a dying race. Perhaps that was why the Master had chosen the name for his own army, back when he was Harold Saxon. Perhaps it appealed to him, on the instinctive preverbal level that all fairy tales spoke to the people who handed them down. Or perhaps the Toclafane were her nightmare first, and he inherited it. Impossible to know where she ended and everything else began. _Forget the story_ , she told herself, in a voice she barely recognised. _Only keep the message. Pay attention. Shut everything else out, and look._

The cell. Perhaps eight feet of space between floor and ceiling. Taste of metal in the air, solid rock beneath the metal. The pedestal (Quanticum Scoop? Long-range teleport?) in the middle of the cell was locked into position, with no obvious join or access panel. She felt her way around it in any case, getting acclimatised to the light, to the new gravity pulling at her limbs. Her hearts were pounding, but she took care to make the sweep methodical, quashing the instinct to hurry or to rage. Anger was always the shortest distance to a mistake; someone had taught her that, or she had taught herself. It was better to listen to fear, which was dread's cousin and by far the more reliable of the two. Fear was not a paralytic, but a spur. Harness it, and a thousand possibilities opened up. 

**And so there was nowhere for the fugitive to hide.** At this point the story diverged. In the version meant for a younger audience, the child screamed out with such psychic force that the elder heard. The Toclafane scattered at the cry, and the two were reunited. In the story told to students of the Academy, the child screamed out and the Toclafane swooped. The disobedience of an ordinary citizen might be borne. For the uninitiated, there was such a thing as mercy. Not for the chosen few. They had seen eternity, and thus had to be kept in check. To make sure of it, the Time Lords created monsters and hid them beyond every opening, on the other side of every portal. _Be thankful_ , the elders instructed, as they led the novices - those who had not run, or whose madness had not yet taken hold - back from the Untempered Schism. _We have shown you the Universe as it really is. And now you know why it must be watched._

Question. Why whole-of-life imprisonment, and not execution? Conjecture: she was not just imprisoned, but under guard. Breathable air and gravity equivalent to the old planet's (she stopped short of naming Gallifrey, even in her head) meant that someone wanted her alive. More than that; they wanted her conscious, and active. That might be her captors' first mistake. The second was to give her a view out. Though the cell's orbit made it difficult to get a fix on the stars, each passing glimpse of them acted as ballast, anchoring her. 

For as long as their light shone, she would not despair. She _refused_.

There was nothing in the cell to suggest she was under active surveillance. Many centuries of travel had taught her that the fact in itself was no guarantee. She dropped to the floor and sat there, hands on her knees, feeling the ache of exhaustion in her muscles and accepting it. Her friends were safe. Now, in that moment, that knowledge was everything. In a very long game, one had to seize each advantage, however slender. 

The silence of deep space - without the background hum of the TARDIS to animate it - felt horrifying, and even a little thrilling. All this was good. It meant there was still some fight in her: some distance left to run. 

The Doctor smiled, and allowed her eyes to close. She could wait, too.


End file.
